Good news — someone ELSE is cleaning my house this morning! And if you live in New York City, they can be cleaning yours, too. And you can pay with a credit card, no need to make sure you have cash on hand. And you can book online and they won’t cancel on you at the last minute. Call MyClean.

I don’t think I can make it through the holiday without some beautiful, perfect macarons from Laduree, now in NYC — must try to make it there this week, despite the fact that a friend went and had to wait in line an hour…. I’m thinking this can be avoided if I get there when they open — 9am Monday through Saturday, 10am on Sunday.

* chocolate chip cookies with sea salt (both salty finds via This Homemade Life). Couldn’t decide which chips would be best to use, so I divided the batter into three batches and tried semi-sweet, milk, and butterscotch. After serious methodical sampling — hey, somebody had to do it — I have to say I liked the milk chocolate the best. The salt is a great foil for the sweeter chocolate.

Remember how we were talking about repurposing the Bonne Maman jars? A while back? No? Well, check it out here.

Anyhoo, we had about eight Bonne Maman jam jars that we deemed too pretty to recycle this year. And over the months, we’ve used them to store leftovers, or to hold a little homemade something that we are passing along.

So this year, in addition to contributing to the teacher’s gift money that the class parents collected, we decided to make some of the famously addictive peanut clusters, and some of the fabulous Union Square Cafe Bar Nut Mix, and pass them along to the women who work so hard with our kids in school.

This picture does not do the cuteness justice, but to give you the idea:

Lining up the jars!

I slapped a little handwritten label on them and tied a bow around the jars, and put them in gift bags.

We had a few people more to give to than we had jars available. They got these cute little gift bags (and some scored Rich Roll Cookies — see your copy of The Joy of Cooking for the recipe):

I’m not done with my Christmas shopping, and I bet you aren’t, either. (If you are, I don’t want to hear about it.) So buying presents is on my weekend agenda. Jasper has a very modest wish list — ear muffs, orange slippers, red markers. Magnolia, on the other hand, has requested a magic wand that WORKS REAL MAGIC. If you have any ideas about how to make that happen, then I definitely DO want to hear from you….

Now on to the weekend….

Robot Kit, Garnet Hill, $4 today

Things to buy:

Stocking stuffers for the kids — Garnet Hill has a cute list of ideas, including this Robot Kit, which is the sale of the day. Regularly $15, today $4.

Fabulous French stuff from Basic French — love them. Basic French will be at the Brooklyn Flea through December, 22, so you’ll have the chance to buy from this online shop in person. Expect gorgeous housewares, adult and children’s clothing, luxe soaps, cute shoes, and random vintage finds. All from France, of course.

Some little something from Anthro — as noted above, you can take an additional 25% off SALE clothing, shoes, jewelry, and accessories through Sunday, online or in-stores.

via A Child Grows in Brooklyn

Things to do:

Get a personalized video message from Santa — seriously, you have to do this for your kid! It’s free, easy, and totally cool. Jasper and Magnolia were both mightily impressed, and with good reason. If your kid’s name is fairly common, Santa actually speaks it — he said Jasper, but Magnolia wasn’t in his database of names…. Still, their names were in “Santa’s book” and they got to see pictures of themselves and Santa mentioned specific individual details, including a gift they each want. You may have seen this elsewhere this week — I saw it on A Child Grows and Chrissy spotted it on Cool Mom Picks — definitely take the time to do it. It’s PNP, the Portable North Pole, that makes the magic happen.